After Morning Exercise, Kyoai Takes on New Market
Mariko Kobayashi has brought a bit of her native Japan to Stanton-based Kyoai USA Inc.
At Kyoai’s building near Beach Boulevard, a Shinto altar for business growth welcomes guests. In Kobayashi’s office, Japanese CDs and a manual on “How to Write English Letters” dot the shelves. But that’s only the half of it.
Each morning at 7:30, the maker of dies for printed circuit boards starts the day out with a Japanese ritual,exercise set to music, in this case, “Rajio taiso, dai-ichi!,” or “Radio Ex-ercise No. 1.”
According to general manager Tadashi Tamashiro, communication between Japanese workers and others hasn’t always been easy. That made company meetings a challenge.
“Staff members were yawning and did not pay attention,” he said.
So, Kobayashi, the daughter of the company’s founder, introduced the traditional Japanese exercise in place of regular meetings. The workers,a mix of Japanese, Hispanics and others,love it, according to Tamashiro.
Thanks to the routine, he said, the number of injuries at the factory have declined 70% in the past few years.
Kyoai is a small arm of Tokyo-based Kyoei Print Giken Co., which counts $15 million in yearly sales. The OC operation counts 15 employees and about $5 million in annual sales. Kyoai USA’s 7,000-square-foot factory produces dies,a kind of industrial cookie cutter used to stamp out circuit boards.
Circuit boards cut from Kyoai dies are found in products from Sony Corp., Microsoft Corp. and Canon Inc., according to Kobayashi.
But Kyoai is changing gears. Most U.S. circuit board makers have closed down amid low-cost competition from Taiwan and other parts of Asia. So Kobayashi said she is shifting from dies to metal stampings, or custom metal components. She predicts that 70% of Kyoai USA’s sales soon will come from metal stampings.
While the metal stamping industry is crowded, the products are more broadly used than dies, Kobayashi said.
“This product will be used for sealed cases for Mitsubishi’s TVs,” she said. “Metal stampings are literally everywhere,in auto parts, mobile phones, you name it.”
Moving into a new market isn’t Kobayashi’s first challenge. Back in Japan, you aren’t likely to find many women running die factories, let alone producing metal stampings.
“In Japan, my competitors in the male-dominated die industry used to tell me, ‘you should wear a miniskirt to get more customers,'” Kobayashi said.
Back home, Kob-ayashi’s older brother is destined to take over the helm of the family business. No matter how well she did at Kyoei, Kobayashi said people used to tell her, “Your father’s fame helped your accomplishments.”
When a South Korean circuit board maker asked Kobayashi’s father to set up a U.S. unit, he offered his daughter the position. Kobayashi said she decided to start anew to hone her business skills. Kobayashi came to OC to start Kyoei’s U.S. unit in 1996 at age 25
In OC, Kobayashi said she hired people with no die-related experience and trained them. She met general manager Tamashiro at a restaurant where he worked as a waiter.
During three months of training, Kobayashi said her die “apprentices” stayed at her Huntington Beach home. Kobayashi said she fixed three meals a day for her employees because she was unable to pay them a “decent” salary.
Then, only six months after starting up, the South Korean circuit board maker closed its U.S. operation, leaving Kobayashi without her main customer. So she said she set out across North America to get new customers.
At first, the company’s Japanese-style dies, which Kobayashi described as good but not as strong as American models, weren’t welcomed.
In Japan, dies are designed to stamp out up to 100,000 times due to constant model changes, while American products are used more than 500,000 times, she said.
So Kobayashi adapted. Kyoai’s U.S.-made dies are at least twice as thick as Japanese products, she said. Today the company’s customers include Dyna Circuit in the Midwest and Photo Circuit on the East Coast.
When things looked bad for the U.S. operation, Kobayashi said her parents begged her to come back to Tokyo and marry.
Looking relaxed in a polka dot mini dress on this hot summer day, the 31-year-old Tokyo native said she feels at home doing business in the U.S.
“I have no intention of going back to Japan,” she said. n
